halflife: last lights
by sol invictus
Summary: A series of stories detailing the struggles for survival of the other characters in the Suite Life universe after the zombie apocalypse has ravaged the world. Chapter one: Maddie part one.
1. Chapter 1

_Welcome to halflife: last lights. Here you will find the stories of Maddie, Arwin, London, Kurt, and Anthony (before he met up with the twins), and possibly others as they try to stay alive after zombies have taken over the Earth. Some stories will be long and multi-chaptered while others will be short and yet others may intertwine. I hope you enjoy. _

Maddie walked down the flight of steps as quietly as possible, stepping on the very edge of the fifth to avoid its groan. The living room was dark and shuttered against the outside world and the candle she carried made the house she'd grown up in seem utterly alien. The bulky refrigerator had been pushed against the front door and the windows had been reinforced with pieces of wood from various dressers and cabinets around the house. Occasionally she'd hear a sound from the street and her skin would crawl. Maddie turned past the kitchen and walked down the halls to the back bedrooms. Pictures of brothers and sisters and aunts and uncles they hadn't heard from since the first days of the outbreak stared at her as she passed.

She poked her head inside one room and heard the deep, phlegmy snores of her grandmother coming from the bed. Maddie smiled a wan smile and retreated from the doorway. Her Gran was still fighting but time wasn't on her side. Maddie walked a bit further and rapped on a second door with her knuckles. Her heart jumped into her throat when she didn't get a reply. Her hand dove into the pocket of her sweater and fumbled to grasp the small revolver she carried.

"Mom?" Maddie had cracked the door and now inched her way further into the dark room. The wooden cross on the far wall immediately caught her eye, just as it had for as long as she could remember. "Momma?" her breath momentarily caught in her chest as a powerful stink hit her. "Mom?" she received no reply and stepped fully into the room. The candle cast a flickering glow over her mother's body as she approached the bed.

Maddie bent slightly forward and looked at the jagged bite just above the knee. The flesh had necrotized and black lines radiated from the wound, both up the thigh and down the shin. Maddie followed a line from its source with her eyes and saw that it disappeared underneath the belt that held the ankle against the bed frame. She sighed and fought back tears.

"Madeline? Is that you?" her mother asked in a whisper. She tried to turn her head in her daughter's direction but it was too grand of an effort and she let it fall back against the grimy pillow after getting half way.

"Yeah, it's me, Momma. How are you feeling?"

"So hot. It feels like the devil himself stuck a coal in my insides."

"Don't worry about that, Momma. Dad's out looking for some stronger medicine for you right now." Maddie looked away so she wouldn't see the green and purple circles that were starting to form under her mother's eyes or the bloody scabs cut by the rope that tied each wrist to the headboard.

"Your father is a fool, Maddie. There's no cure for what I have and he should know it." Her body was wracked with a round of coughs like torn cardboard and Maddie almost fell backwards trying to cover her face. "Keeping me like this is just delaying the inevitable and putting you all at risk. I wish I'd never let him talk me into it. He should have let me end it yesterday."

"Don't say that, Momma," Maddie told her mother through the crook of an elbow. "You know what the Church says about...doing that." She dropped her arm slowly and held the candle with both hands.

"Maddie, I think God would understand. If He's still there." Her voice trailed off.

"Dad says they're probably working on a cure right now. You just have to hold on until-"

"Maddie, twenty-eight years of marriage has made your father stupid. I was dead the minute that abomination bit me." She coughed again but this time Maddie didn't flinch. Maddie wiped her mouth with a towel once the spasms were over. "You need to get out of here. You and Liam, your father, too, if he'll leave me."

"But what about Gran? We can't just leave her."

"Maddie, honey, she would understand." Maddie's mother groaned and flexed against her bonds. "Her time was almost up before all this even started. It won't really matter if she gets her pills or not."

"Someone's going to come, Momma. The Army or the Marines."

"If they were going to-can I have a drink, Madeline? I'm so thirsty," she said, changing the subject in mid-stride. "So tired, too."

"Sure, Momma." Maddie picked up the sports bottle and placed the straw at her mother's mouth. She took a long sip and turned away. Seeing her mother like that, trussed to the bed and slowly but surely dying from whatever infection the monster gave her, broke Maddie's heart.

"Thank you." Maddie watched as she settled in and quickly fell asleep again. She replaced the bottle and backed out of the room, quietly closing the door as she went. She retraced her earlier steps through the house and up the steps and joined her brother on the couch.

"How is she?" Liam asked once she sat beside him. The light from the four candles on the coffee table gave him a haunted face.

"Sleeping now. She woke up for a little bit while I was in there."

"Do you think she's going to, you know?"

"Soon." Her brother looked away.

"What are we going to do?"

"I don't know, Liam. I don't know if we can stay here much longer."

"Dad said we're safe here," the boy told her.

"I know, Liam, but we don't have much food left and it's almost too dangerous to go out and find more with all those...things out there." She reached into her sweater and carefully pulled the gun out. Liam flinched and recoiled as far as he could against the upholstery until Maddie had pointed the barrel away from them and set it on the scuffed table.

"When is Dad going to come back?" Liam asked after a few minutes of silence. His hands turned the small walkie-talkie over and over in his lap. He looked at it, willing it to utter a sound.

"Soon, I'm sure. He said he was going to check out a few of the shops a couple of streets over to try to find some stuff to help Mom and Gran." Maddie bit down hard on her worry and kept it out of her voice by a sheer act of will.

"He should have let me go with him. I could have helped him."

"You might have, Liam," Maddie said diplomatically, "but you also might not have."

"How?" The indignation in her brother's voice was so strong she could almost taste it.

"If he doesn't have to worry about you being okay he can move faster. He knows you're here, safe, so that's one less thing he has to think about while keeping away from those things."

"I can look after myself, Maddie," Liam told her. "I'm not a little kid."

"I know, Liam, I know. But you know how Dad is. He'll still worry about you when you're fifty." The optimism about the future in her voice surprised Maddie but it seemed to soothe Liam's ruffled feathers. He glanced at her and she caught a hint of a smile as he thought about her words. She was about to say something else when the walkie chirped twice.

Liam jumped so hard that it nearly tumbled out of his hands. He pressed the button twice and raised it to his ear to listen. He clamped his free hand over his other ear and furrowed his brow as he tried to listen. "Okay, we'll be ready," he finally said and put it down on table. He looked over at Maddie and they were at the window seconds later.

Directly under the second story window was the the roof that covered the dining room and kitchen. Liam pushed back the curtains and, after a quick peek at the dark streets and alleys, pushed the glass upward. He stuck his left leg out, ducked his head, and swung his right leg through as well, leaving him sitting on the window sill. He hopped the eighteen inches to the first floor roof and began lowering the ladder to the ground below.

"Do you see him yet?" Maddie whispered from the window.

"No, but he's got to be close. Wait, there he is." Liam finished maneuvering the ladder just as his father came around a corner and labored across the last twenty feet. He held on to the top of the ladder as his father jumped and caught a rung just over halfway up. Liam reached out a hand and did his best to pull his dad up the ladder as quickly as possible.

"Thanks, buddy," the man said as he slung a bulging bag from his shoulders. "Hand this to your sister and tell her to dump it out and give it back as fast as she can." Liam did as he was told even though his eyes were full of questions. He waddled to the window with the heavy bag and relayed their father's orders, pushing the bottom of the bag up and over the sill while Maddie pulled. He heard things falling on the floor and he bounced on his toes anxiously while he waited for Maddie to shove the bag back out the window. Long seconds passed before it was back in his fingers and he raced back to his father's beckoning hands.

"You're not going back out, are you?" he asked as the man slipped the sack over a shoulder.

"I have to, Liam," his father told him as he knelt down and put a hand on his son's shoulder. "I found a shop that hasn't been looted yet and there's enough food there to last us a month if we're careful. I got a bunch of it but I have to go back for the rest before someone else does."

"Did you find any medicine?"

"No, son, I didn't." He sounded crestfallen and he swallowed hard before he could continue. "There's a little drugstore across the street from where I got the food. I'll check there before I come back."

"Let me go with you," Liam begged. "I can grab the food while you look for the medicine."

"Liam, I need you here. I need you to watch out for your sister, okay?"

"Okay," Liam nodded after a second. What was he going to do here? It scared him to death to be in the same room as the gun and Maddie was much more level-headed and reliable than he was. He started to protest but the look in his father's eyes told him it wasn't up for discussion.

"Thanks, buddy. I'll feel better knowing that you're on guard here." He leaned in and kissed Liam on the top of the head. "I'll be back soon. Pull the ladder up once I'm down, okay?" he slid back down the ladder and Liam's eyes followed him until he was lost in the shadows of the night. He stood with the top rung of the ladder in his hands for a moment, feeling a mixture of worry and condescension.

Liam struggled but finally managed to pull the ladder back up onto the roof, falling on his rear after a final tug. He dusted himself off and ran to the window and pulled himself inside. His muscles were burning but he forgot the pain as he saw the pile of food his sister was sorting.

"Good grief," he said as he looked over the haul, "what all did he get?"

"A little bit of everything from what I can tell so far," his sister told him as she put three sausages off to one side with a deviled ham and a few cans of potted meat. "Dad must have got into the deli over near Fenway."

"Fenway? That's six blocks away. There must be thousands of those things between our house and there."

Maddie instantly regretted uttering those words when she saw the alarm spread across her brother's face. "I might be wrong. This could have come from that little place on Market."

"No, Dad said he checked there a few days ago and it had been cleaned out." Liam fell silent as he went to the far end of the couch and sat down.

"He's going to be fine, Liam. Dad's a smart man. He'll be careful and he's already been there once tonight so he'll know what to watch out for."

"I guess," he answered, not sounding remotely convinced.

"You'll see. He'll be back before you know it."

Three hours later the candles had burned almost completely down and he wasn't back. Liam was on edge and had nearly worked himself into hysterics. Maddie watched as he paced back and forth in front of the window holding the walkie-talkie in his hands like a talisman. "Liam, please come back over here," she asked after he had frozen in place with his face peeking through the corner of the curtain.

"I'm waiting for Dad, Maddie," he replied in the same monotone he'd been using for the last hour. That voice was beginning to scare her. It sounded like all the emotion had been bleached from it and it made the hair on the back of her neck stand on end.

"C'mon, Liam. Let's eat something. What do you want?"

"I want Dad back here right now. That's what I want."

"I do, too, but he'll be back. I know he will. He probably hunkered down for the night since it's going on three in the morning."

"He should have called to tell us so we wouldn't worry about him. I want to talk to him." He raised the small device to his mouth and had his thumb over the button.

"Don't, Liam," she said, putting her sisterly authority into her voice.

"Why not?" he demanded.

"He might be hiding right now and you might give him away if you do."

"I thought you said he was hunkering down for the night," he said accusingly.

"He probably is, but it's possible. I don't think we should risk it." She put a look of earnestness on her face and assuredness into her voice and seemed to win him over. "Come over here and eat with me. I know you have to be hungry and I think there's some cookies over here somewhere." He was still a year or two from becoming an eating machine but he had always been able to be tempted with sweets. An image of Zack standing by her old candy counter fluttered through her head and she felt a pang of sadness. How were they? Had Carey make it back and got them out? Had-

"-Oreos."

"Huh? What'd you say, Liam?"

"I said I'd like some Oreos."

"Oh, sure. We have some of those," Maddie said as she was yanked back to the present. "They're...where'd I see them? Come help me look." She glanced up and was surprised to see her brother leaving his spot by the window to join her. That was good.

They found the blue package and Liam fumbled with it for a moment before ripping the end open and spilling the cookies on the floor. Their eyes met at the shockingly loud sound before jumping to the window. After straining to hear anything out of the ordinary for a few seconds, they returned their attention to the cookies.

Liam inhaled three before she could eat one and Maddie briefly considered slowing him down since Oreos had become an endangered species over the last week but before she could speak, the fact that so had _they _crossed her mind and she swallowed the words and let him enjoy the cookies.

When he finally sat back from the remaining few Oreos a few minutes later, Liam had a mustache of black crumbs across his upper lip. "Those were good, Maddie. I'm going to miss them when there aren't any more," he told her, eerily echoing her earlier thoughts.

"We'll have more one day."

"I hope so." He reached out a hand for one last cookie but it froze when an inhuman growl reached them through the floorboards. His eyes widened in shock as he yanked his hand back to his lap. "What was that?" Maddie thought she knew but couldn't answer him. It became a moot point when Liam read her face as she tried to form the words.

"Liam..."

"It's Mom, right? She died and became one of _them_, right?" His eyes became wet and tears washed clean streaks down his dirty cheeks. "It's not fair." Another low growl answered him.

"I know, Liam. It's not fair at all." She scooted over and wrapped her arms around her brother. He stiffened at first but relaxed and leaned into her as sobs wracked his body. She held him and gently stroked his hair until he quieted down some time later. The sounds from downstairs came and went and varied in intensity and she did her best to ignore them but they still ate away at her sanity.

"Where are you going?" he asked, startling her as she began extricating herself from around him.

"I thought you were asleep."

"No, I wasn't sleeping. I wish I was, though. That way I could wake up from all this."

"Me too," she admitted as she got to her feet. Liam watched as she walked the short distance to the table and picked up the pistol.

"Are you going to...?" he couldn't finish the question.

"Yes. I have to. Mom would want it that way. She wouldn't want to be one of those things_._"

"I'll do it," he said suddenly, surprising her.

"No, I'll do it. I'm older."

"Dad's older than you."

Liam's logic was sound but she discarded it while also tamping down on her own growing worry. "You're right, but Dad's not back yet and he shouldn't have to do it either. She was...is...his wife. That wouldn't be right." She hesitated in case her brother had more to say but he didn't. Liam simply nodded and stood up.

"I'm coming with you."

"You will wait in the hall," she told him. "You don't need to see this." He nodded again and fell into step behind her as they descended the stairs. Maddie paused once they reached her parents' bedroom, steeling herself against the sounds coming from within and for what she was about to do. Slow, deep breaths calmed her nerves. She tightened her grip on the pistol with one hand and twisted the door's knob with the other. "Stay here," she reminded him.

"I will." Maddie opened the door and quickly stepped through, taking care to block any view of the snarling thing on the bed from her brother. She closed the door and inched her way across the carpet to the bed.

Enough moonlight filtered through the makeshift window bars to fully show the horror her mother had become. The formerly kind and loving eyes had become glazed and murderous. Her soft hands had contracted into bent claws. Maddie nearly panicked and ran out of the room when the corpse lurched against its restraints. Once the thing realized it couldn't reach her, it curled its lips back and settled for gnashing its teeth.

"I'm so sorry, Momma," she said softly. "So sorry." She raised the pistol and looked down the barrel, remembering her father's instructions to the letter. Maddie widened her stance and braced the gun with her other hand. She slipped her finger inside the trigger guard and rested it lightly against the smooth metal.

"I love you. I always will," she whispered. Maddie swallowed hard and pulled the trigger.


	2. Kurt

"We had some good times here," Kurt said to himself as he stood on the roof of the KeyArena with one hand wrapped around the neck of a bottle of Jack Daniels. He hadn't so much as touched a drop of booze since Carey left him so many years ago but he found that drinking was very much like riding a bike. This particular bottle had been just under a quarter full when he picked it up and now it was about an ounce above empty. "We were happy back then. Me, Carey, the twins. God, were they ever tiny." Kurt spaced out and took a nip from his bottle. "We were happy."

He raised his free hand to block out the setting sun and gazed across the city. Somewhere, a mile or two away, was the hospital where Zack and Cody had been born. He couldn't see the building itself thanks to a handful of skyscrapers blocking his view but he knew it was there. He'd driven past it when they first flew into Seattle two days ago and he felt like he'd been tossed into the past.

"I thought she was going to kill me. Honestly. I can't really blame her after being in labor for almost a whole day." Kurt grinned as he recalled her contorted face and some of the ridiculous things she said as she bore down yet again. "If you tell me to push one more time I'm going to push my foot so far up your ass that you can smell it," he repeated. He could still hear her saying it all these years later, still see her brows knitted more than he ever had before, still feel her small hand nearly crushing his in a vice-like grip. He took another sip.

"We were happy. Life was good. I had a beautiful wife, two adorable little boys, and I was big. I was famous. Two gold records in three years. And then the third went platinum. We were on top of the world. We could have been the next Nirvana. And then everything fell apart in the blink of an eye."

Kurt aimlessly paced the edge of the roof and kicked random stones over the edge. He stopped with both of his hands on his hips and looked out again at the Seattle skyline. "That year started so good," he said quietly. Kurt drained the dregs of the bottle and hurled it down toward the parking lot. He laughed a dark laugh when it struck a zombie between the shoulder blades and knocked it to the ground. "This year started good, too."

Kurt had put his new band together at the beginning of the year and they had cut an EP by the end of February. He knew it was good stuff but didn't expect the song he liked the least to race up the charts on both coasts like it had. "That song," Kurt grimaced and shook his head. "We put that damn cover on the demo as filler." He picked up a fire axe right beneath its business end as he climbed down the ladder and returned to the safety of the building's concrete walls.

He walked the silent hallways of the arena with the axe slung over a shoulder, passing glossy poster after glossy poster with a picture of the band on stage vertically centered between _Ghost Empire _and _Last Lights World Tour_. Kurt laughed wryly as he caught a glimpse of the tour dates and cities. "Don't think we'll be playing Fresno tomorrow."

The halls were quiet now and his footfalls echoed off the walls. "Everything happened so fast," he said as he stepped over a headless corpse and avoided a puddle of dark ichor. The whiskey in his system began to make itself known as his gait took on a wobble as he did his nightly rounds through the building.

His tour took him to the lobby and the large bank of doors that kept the mass of zombies out. The thick glass had become smeared with whatever fluids the zombies leaked while pressed against it and for that, Kurt was grateful. They were a terrible sight and they still unnerved him. He shuddered as their low moans reached his ears and wanted nothing more than to get out of the lobby as quickly as he could. He started to turn away but stopped when he saw that a pane of glass in one door had become spidered from the crush of hundreds of bodies.

"Shit," he muttered as he dared to move a bit closer. The zombies became agitated by his presence and Kurt could see the glass bulging and he instantly stepped back. "Not good." He cast his eyes around the lobby, hoping to find something to brace the door, but saw nothing but a handful of folding tables stacked with his band's merchandise that would easily slide across the polished floor. "Shit," Kurt repeated and his hand tightened its grip on the axe's handle. That glass wouldn't hold much longer and he knew it. Once it broke, the zombies would race in like the tide.

It was time to go. He'd been holed up in the 'Key for almost a week, living off the concessions intended for the fans flocking to his first show and drinking himself to sleep every night thanks to a collection of expensive bottles he'd gathered from the luxury boxes lining the arena. Kurt harrumphed as he gave the crowd of zombies a one-fingered salute with both hands. "Should have left a lot sooner," he said as he hurried his way back to the green room on shaky legs, passing large puddles of congealed blood and other, darker, oozes, "but it all happened so fast." His mind replayed the chaotic scene from that fateful day.

He'd been the first of the band to make it to the arena that morning, telling the others that it was to make sure everything was in order while it was actually the worst case of nerves he'd ever had in his career. There was no way he could sit around in the hotel room for one more minute despite not being scheduled to take the stage for another nine hours. He paced back and forth between their green room and the stage, barely noticing the rising number of sirens that managed to penetrate the building. He stopped wearing a rut in the floor long enough to force down a quick lunch and it was then that everything went to hell.

Kurt had flipped on the television in the green room to try to take his mind off of his upcoming performance and caught the end of a segment showing live video from downtown. Fires were burning uncontrolled and there were police roadblocks set up on strategic corners. "What in the hell is going on?" he said as he dropped the remaining corner of his sandwich on the ground.

"The Mayor's office has officially denied the reports of rioting breaking out across the city but as you can see behind me," the reporter said. His mouth kept moving for several more seconds but the wail of a fire truck and two police cruisers racing past hid his words. The camera panned away from the reporter to show the vehicles racing down the street behind him before pulling into a wider shot that showed a plume of smoke rising into the sky from behind a cluster of buildings. "I think that says it all. Back to you, Sandy."

Kurt yanked his cell from a pocket. "Call Danny," he said into the speaker and the phone dialed while he began walking faster and faster to the front of the arena. Kurt scowled at his phone after the call was unable to be completed. He went through the rest of the band but got the same results. He stuffed it back into his pocket as he reached the lobby.

"What the?" he gasped as he stepped into what looked like a triage center from a war zone. Walking wounded were everywhere and Kurt had never seen so much blood in real life. His stomach did a slow cartwheel and his sandwich bubbled back into his throat. A gaggle of men and women stood near the doors that overlooked the approaches to the building, pointing and chatting softly to one another. One had her hands over her mouth and she turned as Kurt neared the doors.

"Should we stay here? They're saying it's not safe out there." Her eyes had a far-away glaze to them, he noted as they scanned over him before returning to the glass.

"Lady, I don't even know what's going on," he told her as he looked outside. Lots of smoke was the first thing he saw, followed by dozens of lone individuals wandering the parking lot aimlessly. Some looked lost while others staggered over the pavement.

"Someone said people were turning into zombies out there," she said as she pressed her face against the glass. Her body shook as she looked out and Kurt saw her hands knit themselves into a writhing ball just above her waist.

"That's bullshit. There's no such thing," he said but was growing less sure with each second he watched the parking lot.

"I need to go check on my parents," the young woman announced and pushed the door open before Kurt could even think to stop her. She dashed across the parking lot and he saw two of the roamers turn in her direction. One walked into a handicapped parking sign and fell but the other trudged slowly after her. He watched, almost enthralled, until his breath had turned the glass opaque.

"And it just got worse from there," Kurt said as he headed down one of the main corridors in the depths of the arena. Most of the people who had taken refuge during the initial outbreak had fled before the sun went down and zombies began to surround the building. Most of those who didn't were wounded but a handful were simply as scared as Kurt was and had nowhere else to go. He'd ended up killing the wounded that night once they died and rose again. He winced as he remembered bashing one young woman in the face with a fire extinguisher after she'd bitten two of his fellow survivors. "Nasty business," he muttered. "Had to take care of them, too."

Kurt drank a lot that first night. He needed to forget everything he'd seen and not think about the things that might be. Five shots of whiskey dimmed the horrific images of what he'd done that afternoon. Another four shots drowned out thoughts of his boys and a further three erased thoughts about Carey. Kurt fell into a dreamless oblivion and didn't wake until late in the afternoon the following day.

He shook away memories as he walked in and picked up the small pack of supplies he'd put together in one of his few sober moments. Kurt slid the pack over one shoulder and adjusted the strap to keep the weight snug against his back. The pack was light but contained enough to hopefully last him through the day or two it would take to get out of the city. He started walking out of the room but stopped, seemingly entranced by a Siren's song from the other side of the room.

He turned and appraised a table standing in the corner. Two unopened bottles of Jack stood on it, the last remnants of his skybox scrounging, and they were calling to him. He hesitated for a second before taking a step toward them. Another step followed but he stopped cold before he took a third. Images of his boys appeared unbidden in his head. "No," he said aloud. Kurt had done enough drinking to forget everything while holed up in the arena. It was time to start remembering again if he was to get out of the arena..

Focusing only on keeping his sons' faces in his mind, he ignored the bottles' call and walked out of the room with the fire axe at port arms. Kurt paused to listen at the end of the hallway and was satisfied to hear nothing. He edged around the corner and began his trek to the bowels of the arena and its loading docks.

As he neared his destination, his legs ceased shaking as the power of fear overtook the effects of the alcohol and his gait lost its awkwardness. Kurt took a deep breath and rounded the last corner. At the end of the corridor stood a set of double doors that led to the loading docks. His hands flexed around the handle of the axe as he stepped to the small windows set into the metal. "Damnit," he muttered under his breath.

Kurt had been hoping that all the large bay doors had been shut but was disappointed when he found two were not. He frowned and quickly scanned the large dock and saw that at least three dozen zombies had made their way down to the arena's back door. "That's a lot of roamers," he said as he steeled himself. "Better than out front but still a lot." He tried to plot the safest path between the shambling zombies but each one he laid out in his head was no better than the rest.

He checked the straps on his pack one last time and gripped the axe firmly again. He bounced on his toes to a count of three and gently put a shoulder to the door. It inched open and Kurt cautiously worked his way through the small gap, his eyes flashing around the bay. He made it through the door and reached back to grab it to close it quietly but his fingers slipped from the metal. He had a fleeting thought that he should have looked for some gloves in the split second before the door latched.

"Ah shit," he said as nearly all of the roamers looked in his direction after the unexpectedly loud sound. Dark eyes searched and found him and the group took a jagged step toward him almost in unison. "Shit shit shit," Kurt said as he finally got his legs moving. Three long strides took him across the landing and he angled around a stack of boxes before hopping down to the nearest truck bay. A roamer reached out and Kurt ducked. Another stumbled at him and he swung the base of the axe's handle around in a tight arc and smashed the creature's nose back into its skull. It fell to the side and Kurt dashed up the ramp toward daylight.

Two final zombies stood between Kurt and the outside. He sidestepped the first, nearly falling in a heap after his foot went out from under him in a puddle of slippery filth, but righted himself just in time to raise the axe up crosswise with both hands and jam it underneath the neck of the second zombie. Kurt pushed as hard as he could but the zombie was heavy. He looked straight ahead and saw a set of rotten, gnashing teeth snapping less than a foot from his own face and he had to fight the urge to vomit. The pushing match had become a stalemate and Kurt had to get out of there before the other zombies joined in.

He leaned forward as far as he could against the thing's girth and lashed out with a kick to the zombie's knee. Kurt heard a sickening sound as the knee explodedand he watched as gravity pulled the zombie down, snapping the head back with a second, louder, _crack _as it broke its own neck against the wooden length. Kurt rolled his hands and the zombie slid off the handle. He stepped away, taking a second to take in his surroundings before moving to the front of the ramp and freedom.

Once outside, he sprinted away from the arena as fast as he could, wanting to put as much space between it and its horde of zombies and himself as he could and didn't stop until he had a disabling stitch in his side. He slowed to a walk and found himself in a relatively empty stretch of street. Kurt leaned up against a smashed car and took in the view. He whistled and shook his head as he looked around. The smell of burnt plastics and paints assaulted his nose, barely overpowering the cloying scent of rot.

"What the hell happened out here?" he asked himself as he raised the collar of his shirt to cover his nose and mouth. He could still smell the foul mixture but now it was bearable. To his left, a five-block section of the city seemed to have disappeared and replaced with gigantic piles of rubble. On his right were dozens of smoke plumes trailing aimlessly into the sky. Kurt pulled a bottle of water from his bag and took a quick drink, momentarily wishing it was something stronger. A moan from somewhere nearby but out of sight immediately dashed that thought. He stuffed the bottle back into the bag and hurried on.

He moved fast but silently and covered nearly two miles before he found an apartment building that was relatively intact. Kurt scouted around until he was sure he was alone and then crept inside. He pulled a battered sofa from a ransacked unit and barricaded the building's back door before moving up the steps to the second floor. He was ready to take a rest and grab a bite to eat so he kicked open the door of a unit overlooking the street he'd come up and hurried inside.

The sliding doors on the patio were shattered but Kurt just picked up a deck chair and shook the glass shards off. He sat down and discovered that he hadn't packed as much food as he thought he had. "Sober my ass," he said as he pulled out three packs of peanut butter crackers he'd taken from a vending machine at some point and devoured them. He looked back inside the apartment, wondering if the kitchen might hold something a little better than crackers, but only open, empty cabinets stared back at him.

"Time to make a plan, Kurt," he said aloud after staring at the empty street for a few minutes. "Step one is definitely get the hell out of the city." He slipped his bag's straps back over his shoulders and got moving. "Step two is going to be to go shopping and get some useful shit. Like a flashlight. And maybe something lighter than this stupid axe. And food." Kurt crept down the steps and stole to the front door. "Step three is going to be..." his voice trailed off and he ground to a halt with his hand on the door.

Where to go? Down to Mexico and find a nice little house overlooking the Pacific and spend the rest of his days dodging zombies and watching the surf roll in? Canada? That was a lot closer and had fewer people and maybe the roamers would freeze during the winter. Kurt leaned against the wall as the realization that he had no idea where to go washed over him. Boston flared briefly in his mind and he was torn. Carey and the boys were there but the city was on the other side of the country with millions upon millions of roamers in the way. The odds of him making it there in one piece were probably just as remote as the odds of his family making it out.

He sat down hard on the steps as the root cause of his pessimism came to him in a flash. Cowardice. "That's why I stayed in the arena so damn long. Why should I have left when I had everything I thought I needed right there?" Kurt tapped the base of the axe hard against the threadbare carpeting and flinched slightly when the knock from the underlying concrete came thudding back. As much as he wanted to deny it, he couldn't. It made too much sense. If it weren't for the coming failure of the arena's main doors, he would have stayed there as long as he possibly could have. "Just so I wouldn't have to deal with any of this."

Kurt felt ashamed as he realized everything he hadn't done since the outbreak. He'd been so wrapped up in his upcoming tour that he hadn't paid attention to what the media called _localized_ _hysteria_ or _riots_ up and down the east coast before it turned into a full-blown epidemic. He hadn't bothered to call his boys or his ex to check on them before or after. He never considered getting out of the arena and fighting his way to the airport while there had still been time.

What had he done instead? Focus on and worry about Kurt and damn everybody else. "Just like I always have," he muttered as he got to his feet. He pulled on the knob and stepped outside once the door was open. He looked east and, before his mind could tell him how far away Boston was and show him gruesome mental pictures of his likely fate if he attempted the journey, starting walking.

"Time to walk the earth," he said, quoting a line from his favorite movie, "like Caine from _Kung-fu._"

_I was hoping to have this up before the holidays but, yeah, thanks to the usual insanities that didn't happen. Santa was good to me this year though so it's okay. He brought me a basketball victory over the much despised and archrival Lexington Basketball Academy (also known as the University of Kentucky) and then followed that up a few days later with a Sugar Bowl win over Florida. So much partying and celebration._

_Aside from Santa and his gifts, I was struck with another severe case of wanting to work on all of my upcoming stories at once and ended up writing very little of anything. And Minecraft. That damn game... Anyway, hopefully the writing logjam has passed and I can get back to updating regularly. Thanks for reading._


End file.
